Why We Need Social Sanity

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Sarah Zylstra
My name is Sarah Zylstra. I write stories of where God is at work in the world for the gospel coalition. And we’re just going to kind of go down the line, first of all, and these ladies will introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about who they are and what their how they currently use social media.

Laura Wifler
Hi, guys. I’m Laura Wifler. And I am mainly on Instagram almost exclusively, I do have a Facebook account, but I’m generally on Facebook or on Instagram. And then I also oversee Instagram for a and so all social media for a online platform called Reza motherhood. And I’m the executive director there and help our team with engaging in social media on that platform.

Blair Linne
Excellent. All right. Hey, ladies, my name is Blair Linne. I feel like I’m loud. are using the stage poetry voice. I am currently Well, I live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And I am currently on Facebook. I’m primarily on Facebook, I actually had a kind of more artist account a couple years ago that I cancelled. And so now it’s just really easy going on Facebook, it’s more of a personal connection with friends and family. I’m on Twitter, not as often because it’s a little rowdy over there. So I don’t post a whole lot. And I really love Instagram. So that’s kind of my thing right now. And that’s the majority of content related to, you know, books that I’m writing or projects that I’m working on.

Amy Gannett
Hi, I’m Amy Gannett, and I am primarily on Instagram, I also have a Facebook account, the only thing I use it for is cross posting from Instagram. And I was on Twitter for a very long time, Twitter used to be my primary platform. And it got a little hairy over there for me. And so now I am predominantly on Instagram. So I run my account, which focuses a lot on women’s discipleship, teaching theology, discipleship in the home, that sort of thing. But I also run an operate a small business ministry called Tiny theologians where we make discipleship resources for ages two to 12. And so I am a part of the marketing team for tiny theologians. So I use that account built that account. And its primary goal is marketing of our little shops. So those are the two accounts that I run, and it’s predominantly still on Instagram,

Sarah Zylstra
I have very good. Maybe you’re like me, I got on social media, well, maybe you didn’t get on the song I’ll flip out 15 years ago started when I was first starting to open up and it was so fun and felt so happy. There I was, it was a place where I was a young mom, which felt isolating. And then I was a homeschool mom, which is also felt isolating. But to be able to pop into an account a Facebook account, which is what I had then and to be able to connect with other people to see friends I hadn’t seen in a really long time, it just felt warm and exciting and fun. And then somewhere over the course of those 15 years, it started to just feel not as fun and I felt more anxious and irritated with it and irritated with myself. And I I just kind of ground to a halt with it in which I didn’t really know what to do. I felt like I couldn’t get rid of my accounts. It felt like I had too much invested there, or what if I lost track of the people, I could give myself 1000 reasons why I should stay on. So I didn’t want to lose them. But I also didn’t really want to use and I didn’t know how to use them well. So last year, we began working on a book that is called Social sanity and still world and we worked on this book for the past year, there’s nine, eight or nine authors that contributed chapters to this book, in which we started digging into issues of identity discernment influence Should I stay on, we are not going to rehash all those for you because you can just buy the book. And if you did that, you probably don’t want me to just say the whole thing again. But what we’re going to do instead today is begin to talk a little deep in that conversation a little bit. One of the things that we hammered on in this book, and I think you just have to come back to as the root, if you’re really going to start thinking about your social media habits is why am I on here? That has to be the first question that you ask, what are what am I hoping to get out of this? What am I hoping to give through this? What are what am I doing here? If you can’t answer that question, well, it’s maybe time to think like should I even be on in the first place? Which is a legitimate question to ask as well. I know the primary reasons maybe that we come to mind because when when we did, we did a survey and a lot of people answered it like this was by far and away number one to connect with friends and family is what lots and lots of people go on and a secondary close second to that, I’m sure is to minister to other women to be a witness for Jesus. And so we’re going to dig into that, to those starting off in this panel. Those are the things that we’re going to dig into a little bit how Do we do that really? Well? Where do you want to start with talking about connecting to friends and family?

Blair Linne
Yeah, you know, I think it’s something like 67% of people who get on social media, they say that they do it for the sake of connecting with friends and family. I think, you know, technology has completely shifted how we socialize, you know, and I think there are some benefits to social media, when it comes to connecting with family and friends, for example, if your friends and family are far away from you, right, there’s the benefit of being able to stay connected. We’ve seen the benefit, even in a pandemic, right, where there’s distance, I think it gives us a global awareness of different issues that may be that that other people are grappling with, that we care about, right, that our friends and family are grappling with. I think it helps us also to find like minded people, people that, you know, we can connect with over similar likes and similar interest. I think the downside, though, is that, you know, with the amount of people that say that they’re there to actually connect with family and friends, it’s actually a very small amount that actually do connect, right. You know, and I think we have to realize that the platform is intended to keep us on as long as possible. So you do you go in, and it’s important that we have purpose, and why we’re on there. But oftentimes, we go in there for one purpose, and then it’s like, we can’t get off the app, you know, because because of the algorithms. And so now you’re getting chopping ideas thrown before your eyes or a celebrity that they’re saying you should follow or a person that someone you follow is following. And so I think it can be dangerous in that way. And that you look up and it’s like, I just wanted to share a picture of my babies. And now, you know, I’m all into, like, some controversy, you know, you know, or I’m just invested in something that it’s like, does this even really matter? And I think we do have to keep in mind, you know, just the dopamine, you know, that is released that there is this, you know, the neurotransmitters that will allow you to have this sense of reward. And so you post a picture of your friends, or to post, you know, so that your friends or your family can see what’s going on in your life. And then you start getting likes, and it’s like, oh, well, I like that, you know, I like that I’m being liked. I want more of that. And before you know it, you’re kind of in this trap. So, you know, my thought is just to be aware, to be alert of what your goal is? And are you actually meeting that goal, and is the goal on social media, that you have to connect with family and friends, is that actually hindering you from connecting with actual family and friends, like in your real life, not the friends and family, across the broad, you know, that are in are far away from you are not real. But you do have a community of people that’s right here, a local church, I’m sure people that you need to connect with. And sometimes we can be so focused on social media that we miss out on those relationships.

Sarah Zylstra
Excellent. I just want to throw two statistics on there to build off of hers. We did a survey last fall of TGC. Women very unscientific. We just asked a bunch of questions on email. But it was interesting, in fact, more foreign to the 80% said that the primary reason is to connect to friends and family. But then only you said, what’s the primary way you connect with friends and family less than 2%? That social media and you know this? If you want to tell your mom something, you don’t post it on Instagram and hope she sees it? Right? We know that you call her or like you WhatsApp, or, or Vox or whatever you’re doing. So there’s just I was that made me think, what’s the return on investment here? Am I putting too much time? I mean, we spend 60% of us in TGC, women spend more than an hour a day on social media, which is probably too much for like those middle school friends, we lost track of a knot. Right? Like, ooh, I don’t know. Amy, do you want to talk a little bit about sort of encouragement and how to be a light on social media when we want to do that?

Amy Gannett
How do we do? That is I think one of the, like you said, we have to answer the why question, why am I showing up in this space? Because whether or not you have a large following or a small following, it’s going to cost you something to show up, right? You’re stepping into a room or you’re stepping into a world or into a current that is going somewhere, and it’s going to cost you something to be there. So asking the question of why am I here is really important. And one of the reasons that I am on social media that I haven’t totally gotten off altogether is because I believe that part of the calling God has placed on my life is to do discipleship. In a public sphere. I do discipleship in my local church. But God has also called me to do discipleship on a public platform, and to teach theology and to help women read their Bibles and understand what they’re reading. So that’s part of why I keep showing up there is because that is still a part of the burden, and the joy, the joyful burden that God has placed on my life. And so answering the why question actually helps me understand the how, of how I will show up on social media and what kind of content I’m going to produce, which helps me count the cost. So for me, this is just if I could pull back the curtain just share with you how I decide what I’m going to put on social media in this discipleship, theology, teaching Bible study category. A big part of what I want to accomplish is helping women read their Bibles understand what they’re reading, but I know I can’t be a mentor on social media. I know I can’t call out sin in someone’s life. This is a one way mirror, I’m only sharing. And I can’t see this is not a mentorship relationship. And so I have to acknowledge those limitations, which changes how and what I’m producing. So I can teach women how to do biblical word studies. It’s so fun to nerd out over Greek and Hebrew words over literary genre over the literary structure of the book of Lamentations. I mean, it’s so fun to share that information. And I feel like I went to seminary and gained a toolbox like full of tools to study the Bible, and I just, I can pass those out on social media. But what I can’t do is sit with you and your quiet time, what I can’t do is answer questions of when do I know that this relationship needs to end? I can’t answer those things. But what I can do is help you study the Word and then walk in, in trust that you will walk in the Spirit and follow the Lord in those areas of application in your life. So understanding why I’m there, and what can actually be accomplished that those teaching, moments sharing about theology, passing out tools, that actually helps me determine what can feasibly be done. I think one of the pitfalls that we see is when women get on social media, because they want to encourage other women, or they want to do discipleship in the online spaces, we get confused really quickly, that we can actually participate in a hands on way in the spiritual formation of another, when really, that is why God has given us the local church. And that is not our job. And when we think it’s our job, we are thinking far too highly of ourselves and the platforms that God has given us. And we need to rush people back to their local churches. So that’s why I’m on. And it shapes the how and the what of what I do on social media.

Laura Wifler
And I think another facet to this conversation of kind of what you’re talking about Amy is on the Creator side, but also thinking about how it affects you on the consumer side. Because I think that it’s very, very best, like the absolute best social media really can be kind of a Titus two type experience, right? We can learn discipleship type things, we can even learn how to bake bread, we can learn how to sew clothes, we can learn how to get grass stains out of the soccer, jerseys, all of those kinds of things, and it’s beautiful. But on the other side of things, oftentimes, we’re not really thinking about who or what is influencing us. And Sara and I were just talking behind the scenes a little bit about this, where there’s, it’s, it’s kind of one of the things where you might not even spend that much time on social media, but you need to ask yourself kind of who am I being discipled by who, who am I consuming from who is influencing me, and if your feed is curated with a lot of people who are into high fashion, or you know, different types of food, in ways of eating, or whatever, you will become what you behold, and you will begin, even if you don’t spend a lot of time there. Like you will start at least wanting to be like those people and and you want to be very discerning with who those people are. Because you might say, Well, I only watch her stories for 15 seconds a day, but then 365 days a year for five years, that that person has a lot of influence in your life or a lot of people’s stories, I was like very generous to say 15 seconds, a lot of people’s are three minutes, five minutes. So think about how much content you’re taking in from that person. And it might not feel like a lot. But when you start thinking, I’m engaging with this every single day, you know, that might be more than with women in your church or with with your own mother or things like that. And so I just think that’s like an important side. There’s always kind of two sides on social media. There’s that creator side and kind of what you’re doing and putting out there but then also what you’re taking in.

Blair Linne
I just wanted to add to that just as a consumer. I think it’s important to know what platform actually best suits you. One of the things that I realized I was on like Tik Tok for a hot minute, like for maybe like a month and then I realized this is making me crazy. Like, you know, I mean, I think just the idea of you even though you can curate some of you know what you’re receiving, but it’s just video ows popping in front of you, you don’t know what’s coming. I just felt like I would often just feel anxious as I would spend time on there. So I was like, yep, nope, I’m just deleting that. That’s not for me. Yeah,

Laura Wifler
yeah, I think we often like run to social media because we feel anxiety, right? We’re in our homes, and we’re like, oh, my gosh, I don’t know what to do right now. And so we’re like, let’s just get on my phone and check on Instagram, you know, it feels comforting thing that we’re going to approach. But you got to ask ourselves, Am I anxious? Because, and need to get on social media to get rid of that? Or am I actually anxious because I’m on social media. And a lot of times, we are not actually finding the source. And I think we’re going to talk about it. So I don’t want to jump ahead. But while just with with breaks, and fast, I’m gonna talk about that. Okay, I want to talk about social media breaks.

Sarah Zylstra
I want to say something first, when we did our survey, it matters how old you are what you struggle with the most on social media. And if you are in Gen Z, like 25, and younger, the thing you struggle with the most is body image. And this makes sense if you think about it for even two seconds, because that’s when you’re going through puberty, or you’re supposed to be at your most physically attractive stage. So body image is far and away at that age, the hardest thing now women are age, what you guys said in this survey is time, like, you just feel like you either lose time on it. And it just makes your life feel like you don’t have a lot of time. So I was thinking about this a little bit. And I you know, you can look at your screen thing, and it’ll tell you how long you were on each thing. But I think that’s, that’s a little bit false. Because if I’m looking at my phone, like I’ve got a couple minutes before the kids come home from school or something, and I jump on social media to look at it, and then they come home from school. I’m irritated that they’re interrupting me, I’m also my mind is still thinking about that, right? Like it takes How long are you am I still processing all of those many things. And so my brain is not even in my physical world around me, I’m still just thinking like, oh, man, Sam from middle school, or, you know, like, whatever, like, boy, Joe over there. What’s he do? Like, I’m thinking about all of that. And so there’s a long tail that we’re not counting the cost of, if I’m not on social media, and I have those couple minutes before my kids come home, and I think, Oh, my kids are coming home, like, what are we going to, they’re gonna have a little bit of time, probably they’re gonna buy should get on them to do some homework, and it’s super hot. What if I just made a really quick thing of lemonade. And then when my kids come in the door, I am present, I’ve already been thinking about them, or the next phase of my day, I’ve prepared for it, even if it’s the 32nd thing. I don’t feel like I’m squished for time, I don’t feel irritated with them for interrupting me and my mind is, is in my actual life. Let’s talk about brakes.

Laura Wifler
Okay, I love that. That’s that that is a perfect example of the beauty of brakes. And I feel like an important part of this conversation kind of does get into the science, I like that you talked about dopamine, because I think the the reality with dopamine is it works like a teeter totter. So it always your brain always wants to be imbalanced with the pleasure and pain reward system. So if you experience like a spike and pleasure, then you’re gonna have a downward movement towards pain. And so then your body balances it out, it’s a really good thing, right? We want to be calibrated and kind of sit at this level. But what a lot of people don’t realize is that as you have more hits of dopamine, you need that higher and higher spike, right. That’s why influencers always say, Well, I just want more followers, or we want, you know, I just always want one more Fredo, I just, I need one more, one more chip, you know, one more piece of cake, whatever it is. And so because you’re always trying to you feel this dip in pleasure. And so you want to go back, I’m sorry, you feel this dip into pain, and then you want to go back and get some pleasure. And what happens though, is that as that goes up, up up, and you need higher and higher stimuli, you actually become more immune to typical natural things that God has designed for you to find pleasure in, like a sunset, like your children, like your husband’s laugh. So there’s all of these things that as we put basically, like false, that could be TV, lots of different things, not just social media. But as we gain like this higher and higher tolerance, we’re actually depriving ourselves of the joy that’s found in the people in front of us in friends and family that we could connect to in real life. And so I just, I think that’s like a very real part of the conversation is like, how do we figure out the tolerance with these things, and we still want to be able to engage in social media doesn’t mean throw it out. I mean, I still drink coffee. I still eat chips, you know, all that kind of stuff. But that is why panels like this books like this, I think are so important, so that we are engaging really wisely. And with breaks. Those are I feel like I got really loud for a sec. Sorry. I think that those are really, really key and how we’re thinking through how to kind of balance this pleasure plane reward system. So I’m talking a lot and I know he has a lot to say. So

Blair Linne
I was just going to add to that. I mean, I think it’s helped What to think through? How do you know if you need to take a break? Right. And I think there’s some I’ll share some things. I think if you’re going to social media for a coping mechanism, I think you need to consider a break, if you’re going to it to fill a void, if you’re going to social media to feel a sense of value or worth. I think if you go to social media, as we talked about, and you’re feeling stressed, you’re feeling anxious, you’re feeling depressed. I think that those are all things that I think are worthy of considering taking a step back from it. I don’t know if you guys think of anything else. Well,

Laura Wifler
and I would say that you might not know that answer, right? Like you again, you might have your things reversed and be like, Well, I’m not stressed out, like, I’m totally fine, you know, and you might just say like, It’s my life, or it’s my crazy kids, or it’s the job or whatever. And so for me, another piece of this, this kind of dopamine conversation, I won’t nerd out on it all day long. And this is this is my Hebrew and Greek. But another piece of this is that everyone will have different tolerances, right. So like you say, I’m a salty girl, I’m a sweet girl, you know, like, you have friends that love dessert, and you have friends that love the salty food. And the same thing happens with a different piece of media or addictive things that we engage in. And so some people might have a very high tolerance for social media and genuinely might not affect them very much. But then you might have another friend who’s like me, and every time we get on, they’re like, oh, just raw, you know, I just go crazy. You’re like, oh, I mean, I kind of get it, but I don’t really get it. That’s, that’s okay. Right. Like, we need to allow each other to have different tolerances. But that’s where I go back to what you’re saying blur is that you really may not know how social media is affecting you until you experience withdrawal. And like, I’m a high tolerance person, I can handle a lot of social media, I can handle a lot of negativity, and I’m just like, okay, and but yeah, I took a 30 day fast last October, my first one ever in like 12 years. And it was eye opening, just the ways that I realized, Oh, I do rely on social media and social media does affect me. And it was a lot like whole 30 Terrible. Day 16 I was like, ready to just roar at someone for sure. So but anyway, trifast to figure it out.

Amy Gannett
I think, I think one thing that has also helped me I haven’t done a long term fast, but there are times you shine i I’m an avid thinking about it. I’m praying to it genuinely I’m I got to the point a couple of like a month ago, maybe six weeks ago now, where I felt what Sarah was describing that tail, like I would get off social media. And I felt that my mind was still present in a social media world, I was more concerned with what was happening in my absence in the space that I was for what was happening in my home in my daily life. And it was exasperating to me, it was emotionally draining because I didn’t want to feel that way. I didn’t want to be distracted while I’m helping my daughter put on her shoes. But I was I didn’t want to be frustrated with my kids. But I was and I wanted to clip that tail like I wanted to say, I can get on it. But I want to be able to get off and be off. And the language that I kind of kept coming back to in that conversation was I told my husband, I want to feel the edges of my life again, I felt so numb to the texture of my in person daily life. And I wanted to feel it again. And one of the things that has helped me it’s a little mechanism. And I don’t know all the science behind the dopamine hits, like Bora does, I’ve read a little bit on it, but miniscule in comparison to what you’ve read about it. But one of the things that’s helped me is I’m a person who struggled with anxiety in general and I struggled pretty significantly with postpartum anxiety after my first was born. And I have a three month old and so in preparation, sort of reading myself for potentially struggling with postpartum anxiety again, one of the things that I started doing was a coping mechanism for anxiety, you may have heard of it. If you’re feel on the edge of a panic attack, you can go through all your five senses and name something, you can hear something you can see something you’d smell something you can feel, you know, all those things. And I have actually found that when I get off social media, if I can cue into just one of each of those, it actually grounds me back in my physical world, I shut off my phone and all of a sudden, I noticed that I’m smelling that the coffee is just about ready and I feel the pages of my Bible, if I’m sitting there for my quiet time, under my fingers, or I feel my sweater and I can hear my child waking up from their nap, or whatever it is. It just cues me in it turns me back It tunes me back in to my real life world and it actually helps me appreciate in a really wonderful way how sweet life is life in this world is really wonderful because God has given us all of these joys and pleasures to be enjoyed. And so that is one really small way that I’ve learned to clip that tail to get off and be off. Now, there’s something that you mentioned that is kind of

Amy Gannett
making me think about something. So if this is too hard of a left circle, this background, Sarah, but one of the things that I think is so important is for us to consider the different platforms of social media and what they’re designed for. And it’s interesting, if we think about it, if we think about history of social media, I’m not going to ask for a show of hands. But all of us up here were around when MySpace existed. So maybe you didn’t, but all of us are here back in the day when it really was just a platform for you to really customize. And you could do some customization and you could put out content. And then if you wanted to go see something from a friend, you had to seek it out. And you had to be really selective, and you had to be kind of creative, like you had to be kind of thoughtful, and then we moved into the Facebook world, we moved into the Instagram world, and we’re moving into the Tick Tock world. And you notice platforms are becoming more and more self propelled, they’re giving us a lot less freedom. And I think it’s important that we stop and recognize what they’re asking of us. They are not asking it for engagement, they are asking for submission. Tick tock is asking for us to be subject to whatever they decide to put in front of our eyes. And so what I’m not here to do is say tick tock is vile, and nobody should ever consider using it. What I’m saying is, by knowing what’s demanded of us, when we get on these platforms, then we can create counter habits that help us remember, who do we submit to ladies, we are not submissive to social media platforms, we are submissive to our Savior. And so we need counterintuitive habits that retrigger our brains into submission to God, and to stand our ground in the Lord. So I think knowing the platform and knowing what it’s actually been designed to do, and and if you were to ask the founders of Tiktok, the founders of meta, what they designed these apps to do, they are unashamedly telling you that they want to put what they want in front of our eyes. And so they’re not being shy about it. So we need to not be shy about our counter action as well.

Sarah Zylstra
So I think what I’m hearing is that, in order to stop and think about this, well, we first actually do need to stop and like take some sort of a break. I think John Piper says that Christian fasting shows you the desires of your heart, or the idols of your heart or something. So even if it’s just a little bit longer than it would be normal for you, if that’s an hour or a morning or a day or a week, whatever would feels like a little bit longer than comfortable to examine what’s in your heart. And then to think, why am I here or discuss with your family or your closest friends? Like what do I actually want on this? Why am I here? And then I love what you’re talking about, like with the, the the touch, like getting back into your real life? Are there other habits that you ladies have or tips about? If we’re gonna stay and I’ll just tell you right now, I’ve been off now for two months from everything, and is the most amazing thing in the whole world. Everyone should just get off social media. It is so good. My thoughts are clearer and more complex. And I can read chapters in a book and I just feel so much more rooted and grounded in my life, I am planning better, I feel like I have oodles more time and really you guys I was barely on. And I still feel like I have oodles more time I think it’s just the brain pressure that it has taken off. So now my number one recommendation is to leave entirely but say you don’t want to leave entirely. Do you have like what’s your your guidelines? Or how do you think through? Or what do you implement in your own lives that are healthy? Social media habits?

Blair Linne
Yeah, for me, I mean, I think it’s first of all important to curate who you’re following. And, you know, there have been times where I’ve been following people, and especially on Twitter, they will recommend people that the people I’m following are following. And I’m not interested in those people. And so sometimes I have to delete the people I’m following. You know, so you determine what comes before you. And that’s what I do appreciate as much as you can control it on certain platforms seek to do that. Another thing that I’ve done is I’ve deleted apps for a certain period of time, like that’s been helpful for me. You know, just to say, I find myself getting on it too often. And I think we spend much more time on social media than we actually sometimes are willing to admit. Because we can go to it when we’re, quote unquote, bored, you know, or oh, I just have a minute. Let me just open up the app for a minute and you look up you’ve been there for five minutes or 10 minutes. And so you know, we do that too often. Um, I think putting down the phone when my children are around. That’s huge. Because I noticed my children saying, Oh, can we have a phone? You know? And I’m like, No, you know, I’m a millennial. So, you know, I didn’t get a phone until, you know, later in life. And so I know what it was like before having a smartphone. And so I do fight for that time to be able to read and enjoy nature. And so yeah, just fighting for that time, being able to read, and everything is not just a snippet, you know, being able to identify what’s true, because you oftentimes you don’t have the ability to know if what is put before you is actually a fact. You know, because often isn’t factcheck. So, you know, just knowing what are the sources? I think raising those questions. You know, you see things also like cyber bullying happening. You know, now, I’m pretty mild on social media, I haven’t had too many, I’ve had some people who have said some mean things. But it’s been a little mild compared to others, you know. And so just knowing when you need to get off, like, if there’s just unhelpful things that people are communicating to you just take a break, you know, so those are a few things that I’ve done.

Laura Wifler
Okay, everything she said, did, oh, I love that. I have also found great help in the iPhones like focus feature where you don’t get calls and notifications or anything like that. And the big reason I do that, and I don’t get alerts for any of my social media platforms, but it allows you to kind of get into like a, I’m a big fan of Cal Newports, deep work. And so to just like, be able to dig in deep, and whether that’s, you know, hey, I’m gonna bake six casseroles this morning, and I’m gonna give them to people or I’m, I’m working on a book project, or whatever it is, you’re able to, like, get a lot of focus. And that’s just a quick way to like, have your phone stop talking to you. And kind of put it away in a drawer and just say, like, I’m not going to even touch my phone, unless it rings with my, you know, emergency contacts, which my husband and I have a few of those. But I’ll hear that, and I’m able to just kind of focus in I think that gives you a nice chunk every day to not get sucked into the vortex whenever, like my thumb will literally like I will be like, I’m gonna go to text and it will somehow go to Instagram, I don’t even know how and I don’t I’m like being very serious. I’m like, how did that happen? I didn’t mean to get here. And so you know, just kind of getting that away. But then if you’re planning on taking, taking a break, kind of like I talked about earlier with like a 30 Minute, I’m sorry, a 30 day fast. I recommend that because they say it takes 30 days to make or break a habit. And so it’s just kind of a good number, you could do less. And you could do more, of course, but 30 days does seem to be a good amount of time. If you’re saying hey, I want to kind of go through the swing of emotions of what it really looks like for me to be off social media to really understand my habits to understand my why I would recommend that amount of time. But of course, you can do anything you want. And then journal your way through it, just like you would any anything else to just say day one, this is how I feel it’s no big deal. And day five, it’s becoming a bigger deal, or I have FOMO or whatever it might be, and kind of worked. Work through it. I think it was really helpful for me on the other end, to be able to look back at these notes and say, okay, definitely hadn’t experienced a big dip and a day where I felt like this is the dumbest, like, why am I doing this, I should just get back on and I had all these kinds of like, whatever feelings, but then realizing the surge and creativity, the surge and what Sarah’s talking about, like being able to think ahead of being more present and engaged of having a longer attention span, and all of these things that you don’t really realize that you were missing, you start noticing those a few weeks out. And those are just benefits that you might not have realized that that you were missing. And then before you re enter and reengage really thinking through how is it all these questions that we’re asking? How is it that we want to who do we want to be on social media? What do we want to consume? And when do we do it? I have a friend who does a week on a week off a week on a week off. I have friends who take like a monthly I’m sorry, a yearly sabbatical for like one month or they took the whole summer off or anything like that. So you can kind of pick those things. But do that before you reenter. Because you won’t reenter and then be like, oh, yeah, I was gonna make these rules and boundaries. And there’s just something about, I think, realizing that social media is a tool, not a toy. And so often we think of it as a soft, cuddly teddy bear. You know, we’re just, oh, it’s so fun in there. I love it. All my friends are there. And we just get, we just hold on to it like a toy that we don’t need to have any worries about. But really, it’s a chainsaw. And you need to read the user’s manual before you pick that thing up, because it could really hurt you. And so those are the ways that we need to start viewing social media instead of just saying I’m going to engage this ignorantly it’s really saying, Okay, I’m gonna take some time away, figure out kind of who I am apart from this. And then what does it look like for it to be integrated into my life in a really healthy way with submission to the Savior? I like that.

Amy Gannett
Yeah, I think all of this is really, really helpful, especially as we think about consent. Using social media, so I’ll share that is if I could say something. That’s what I would say about consuming. So I’ll say something for those of us producing for those of us creating, so you might be here and you’re thinking, I want to grow my social media platform because I want I’m creating things that I want to get out into the world. And I want to commend that impulse. When we create things that God has placed on. When we create things that the Lord has given us to put into the hands of his people that are a blessing to them, we’re being obedient by sharing them with others. And so insofar as the Lord has called you to share the message he’s placed on your heart, or the things you’ve created with others, feel feel the freedom to use social media as a tool as one of the tools to communicate to others the message God has given you. But for those of us who are creating one of the messages we hear constantly about social media, is that we should maybe be about one, two, maybe three things. So the goal of making your personal Instagram into a brand is to drill down on just the things God has called you to. And there’s not that’s not altogether bad. It gives sometimes an audience clarity about why you’re showing up in that space, what you’re there to do, what you’re not there to do that sort of thing. So some people find it really helpful to have these boundaries. I’m here I share it, I write about three things. I was even talking to another speaker here at the conference who said on Mondays I posted about this topic on Tuesday, I posted about this topic on Wednesday, this and Saturday, this and that is it. And so her brain as a result, for good or for ill and she wasn’t even sure, for good or for ill is constantly thinking which day of the week is this thing that I’m experiencing right now in my real life, which day of the week does that fit into, because I’ll share it on one of the things. But the result is that what we have done is encouraged people to think more and more narrowly about the life and calling God has given them. And the result can be a really clear set of communication principles for our platforms, which is helpful in one way. But it saps creativity, instead of thinking about a topic in a complex way. I mean, I was even telling my husband the other day, we were walking through the yard pushing our daughter on the swing watering the garden. And I suddenly had this memory of being in seminary and going on walks and letting my mind wander down theological rabbit trails. And you know, what I don’t do anymore, is wander mentally and wander about things and think I know this theological principle and this one, are they somehow related and what is happening in our current church moment, and cultural present day? What? How are these things related? I’m not thinking those complex thoughts, like you mentioned, I’m not letting my brain wander because it’s easy to be convinced that we need to boil ourselves and our callings down to two, maybe three things. And so I think if those principles help you use those principles, do it if it’s beneficial to you. But don’t forget that creativity happens. When we are letting ourselves outside of just that box, we have to wonder about something let our brains tickle with a question. And instead of reaching for our phones to look up the answer, or to find somebody who can speak to it right away to find is anybody else teaching on this? Does this product exist in the world? Is there an influencer for this category? Instead of that letting ourselves be human and think human thoughts after God? And letting that be part of how God has wired us? He’s wired us to wander and wander in our mental capacity. That’s part of the Imago Dei. And so pushing pause, if you find yourself only thinking, does this fit into this category? Does this fit into this silo? Letting your brain wander and think about things and ponder things? Because that’s actually where the creativity that God has called us to as content creators. That is where that’s going to thrive the most.

Sarah Zylstra
Excellent, thank you, ladies so much. We have maybe five minutes left. I don’t know if you have any questions, but this would be the time that we would be happy to answer any questions from the audience. Yes.

Unknown Speaker
Pastor, and we do Facebook and Instagram, but we use them as well, we probably have two main points that we do, and that will be announcements and updates. If we feed Facebook, we hate Instagram, and neither of us enjoy the monitor. And there’s so many other ways that we communicate and you talked about it a lot. And we feel like Facebook is more geared towards our parents and Instagram is more geared towards our students who do the same things on I was just curious if you guys had any suggestions like I don’t know, just some form of credit healthy habits in that ministry? Like?

Sarah Zylstra
That’s an excellent question. Let me just repeat it. So what she’s asking is her husband’s youth pastor. And of course, that’s how they get their announcements out right is Facebook and Instagram have this is what’s happening, or here’s an update of what’s going on. This is super common in ministry, to like, that’s just the way that you communicate with people. Even if you also have other ways that you’re communicating with people, you’re I’m sure you are sending all your stuff out and multiple, trying to hit everybody in what they’re going to read. So any help? What do you what do you recommend?

Blair Linne
One thought that I had, you know, when you submit something that you want to post on Instagram, I don’t know if you’re familiar, but there is a way that it can also go to Facebook. So that cuts out like having to create a different posts. But you know about that already? Is it just the engagement on both of the platforms? Do you have to respond to people? Is that what you hate or just

Unknown Speaker
that our engagement is very low? And we love, like, being one on one, kind of like what you said how it’s like a one way here, you don’t see the other side of it? You know, we don’t see our students responding. We don’t see our parents responding. And it’s not like we don’t see them on a regular basis. When we have you through, or we see them at church or just in other ministry things. It’s not like we don’t see them, but it’s just

Amy Gannett
so it’s a communication tool. Right? Is that what I’m hearing? Yeah, but does it

Laura Wifler
have to be a community? Does it have to be the way that you just survey your community and say, Hey, what’s the best way to reach you? And then just like, go with the majority, or like, just go to a newsletter and pop in their inboxes, and I’m gonna student to run it,

Amy Gannett
I would say, okay, Laura, that seriously, I don’t think that that’s laughable. I’m a local ministry person. So either there are lots of options here. One, somebody else can run the announcements, you can tell them what the announcement is, and they can put those on there. And that can be their ministry, there is somebody who doesn’t hate it, you know, and it’s a good, it’s good for us to be reminded I, I’m big local church person, it’s good to be reminded that God is calling lots of people to lots of different things. And they’re good at lots of different people. God has given people lots of different skill sets. So maybe there is someone who has that skill set, and it would give them joy to use their creativity in that outlet. But I also would say, we teach people, we coach people in an unspoken way on how they can get a hold of us and how to expect communication. And so we can coach them in a different way. We can say we use a church management software. And so we can send out quick updates via text and email in just the click of a button. And we have told our small groups, and most of our ministry serve teams. That is how you’ll hear from us. And you know, we don’t say I don’t say this harshly, but it’s like not really a conversation. It’s not like, oh, oh, you’re on Facebook. Okay, I’ll post it on Facebook. Oh, you’re on Instagram opposite. It’s just we teach them and coach people and how they’re going to hear from us. So if you want to say hey, we’re not going to do this anymore, because nobody could take over this ministry. Great. We’re going to text you and or we’re going to email you and that’s how you’ll hear. So make sure you’re tuned in. So it’s not bad to switch up how you’re doing it.

Sarah Zylstra
We are out of time. I’m sorry. We’re out of time. But if you have questions, we’re still up here. We do still exist. And so come on up. If you have questions afterward, we’d love to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming here today. And I just really pray that God blesses whatever you do with your social media.